Awaji island- part two

I meant to update my second day of islaand of summercamp sooner, but adter the test I got busy with work, then soon we had our school  Day trip and so on, and i just got tiedup...

so anyways, to write up the overview of summercamp to awaji... i thought of coming up with "ranking" so here it is...

"TOP 5 Awaji Summercamp surprises"

1."getting lost" in a dark! It was part of our plan to go and find "umi hotaru" which are lighting bugs? those are the bugs glow in dark, and they like fish sausages so we had this jar with the fish sausage tied with string- and supposely hoping to see many bugs glow in dark.... until we realized most of our flashlights died and didnt really see clearly so we totally got lost then since we (teachers) live in cities we didnt notice the counryside get no lights and it is pretty easy to get loooooooost! well, we did get some... but it was a little sad to see kids sad faces... but the teacher was even more upset, and sweaty, and.... exausted! haha

2. Amazing! 5 yr old boy, used to be "little baba"a year ago, didnt cry, wedge, wine, or ask us to pick him up or huggy during the whole camp. He is the little one in our group and normally gets away with his "cute" way and cuddle... but at the camp we are all busy, and focusing on getting to places on time and figuring out what to do next, then believe ornot he got so independent, at eating time, sleeping, carring bags, he was one independent little man and i was so surprised and proud! when kids got no choice but to take care of themselves, they do!

3.Morning and Evening Meetings at the Youth Cultural center where we stayed, we had to choose one child from our group to come up to the front and talk in public about our day and greeting, we absolutely had no idea so we as teachers felt a little too bad not to be able to mention it-noone wanted to go to the front but then we had one brave 5th grade boy volunteer and did a great speech just like a grown up businessman in a presentation!

4.In the "Youth cultural center" there were so many rules, it was the part of "learning" as a group and teamwork- yet one that annoyed me the most was that in the morning before leaving the building, few had to go back to the floor that we were staying in and just be there while the "checkers" check all of the lists such as "there is no dust or garbage on the floor" or "windows are all shut" then if there is anything that needs to be redone, they had to, of course... yeah, i did check, double check everyone's room- but still, they had to redo it!

 

5.Nice "indigo dying" t shirt project!  i really wish i brout a t shirt with me because all of he kids t shirt turned out so nice!

i have many more, but i will stop right here!!

anyways i think you all got the idea, this camp was a good one and i enjoyed it very much!

 

Awaji island summercamp 淡路島サマーキャンプ

awaji island 淡路島 youth cultural exchange house 青少年交流の家 

when everyone arrived at ici(our school),we gathered all the

kids and did a morning greeting. We had 18children aged 5 to 11 plus a 15 year old volunteer, who did a great job helping us all. I was assigned 3boys and two girls as my group so we decided to make a "call" which is just a simple attendance taking- 1,2,3,4,5,and 6(that's me )"  WE ARE HERE!!!"  even though for many kids ut was the first time to attend any type of camp in addition "English" camp, they did really well !!!! for example in my group, there were only two that understand or speak english without mixing Japanese, but the other three TRIED really hard to speak some phrases or repeat what the teachers said." which wAs great to see.

when wd got on the bus each student and teacher introduced themselves. 

i had one a few goal for this camp.  

one was to remember

everyone's names and their dream.( our camp was called

dream exchange camp and we did a presentation @ night) 

second, to talk to every child and give them positive

comments. 

third, have fun but be serious because this is work but enjoy

as much as i can. 

when we got the awaji island we checked in

and saw what our rooms look like,then we headed to the craft room which was locked even though we checked with the office and they said it was okay to use the room . .  well , but kids know how to kill the time outside very well some did bug hunting while others played "だるまさんがころんだ"daruma sanga koro n da  it's a popular outside game which is just like the "whats the time Mr.wolf ?"

then a cleaning lady came smiling and said I'm here now!!I'm here now!!  kids were like "finally!!!" 

what we did in there was to make up our own indigo dying design on a white t-shirt. I really wished I brought a white t shirt since this was a real cool craft and the kids t shirts turned out so nice,every one of the shirts were great piece of art!!!!!

we put those t shirts aside then we went to lunch. buffet style  lunch , of course kids got so excited to get their own tray,plates, and food. yes all u can eat. 

I thought it was really good that everyone had to separate the trash(plastic or garbage like leftoverfood) then used chopsticks, put their tray away. I didn't help the kids but watched them over from distAnce feeling nice to see some of them grown up since the first tme I met them. that's the pleasure of teaching litte kids !!!!!

we headed to the beach and did some shell collecting and plAying with sands a bit -thNks to nicebear IKUMA , our photographer he took great pictures at the beach too kids were so excited even though we told them we weren't going in the wAter (it was pretty chilly and waves were high) but of  course they enjoyed getting their feet wet and splash eAch other.after a water gun fighting with laughs and tears (we Lywas huv someone crying because of this and that when we have competitions)

it kind of sucked that the bath time was the end of the day not before dinner,since we were covered with sweats sands and dontknow what.

to be continued . zzz.... 

夏休み親子で日本語教室 Summer Holiday Japanese Class for parent-child

Today was the first day to work for the sumer holiday NIHONGO class for mommy and child (can be daddy too, just today we had only mommies)participants nationalities varied, Japan, Korea, China,(could be Taiwan, they were speaking chinese India and others, Im not sure because we werent introducing our background.

Believe or not, it was my frist time working with children in NIHONGO, (japanese) because i had always working in International Enviroment=Speaking in English.

The teacher who was in charge asked me "Would you like to read them a Kamishibai?" Kamishibai is like a story, but each chapter is on a big card instead of a page in a book. so you have to flip one and put it on the back of the cards to show the next one... so hard to excplain, anyways, it was so sudden and i got all nervous and i said ... "well, ive never read a japanese kamishibai in front of children..." but the teacher's eyes were telling me "are you going to have a choice?" so i said "certainly, yes. i would love to!" and she said "good, you can practice once after making your nametag"

So i did that, and it was my time to read them. the title was おおきくなあれ　"become bigger!" and fortunetely this story had very little words and repeating おおきくなあれ！おおきくなあれ！ there was a part where i encouraged the kids to say together, and they were so loud and shouted out the words with me. they were so so so cute and did an amazing job on listening!

we did some games and learned ようび　and 数字　days, and numbers 1-31, to make a calender! it was an amazing little class we put together and i absolutely loved working today! its only in summe holiday and once a week, but im very looking forward to the next time and i wanna contributemyself as much as i can. i think this meeting can lead to another opportunities.

all the other veteran teachers are nice too, they are much older than me and i think if we got time i can ask them a lot about Japanese child care, and maybe exchange opinions about education, since im more americanized way to teach and interact with children (hugging, laughing together and pretty much having lots of fun WITH them) today's participants children were very used to me at the end of the session and they asked me "will you come tomorrow?" so it was a good day, and i learned a lot!!!

I might have an opportunity to give some kind of lesson or activity, so i have to come up with something, in, Japanese, ofcourse! excited!yay!